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WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT ME. From the introduction to The Riot Act:

I owe money to everybody in town.

In crime fiction, soap operas and rock songs this is a very romantic thing. All that bad boy living on the edge shit. Its another deal altogether when youre actually down there in that gutter, drinking yourself blank, going to bat for your beliefs and bleeding for causes that seem like half-remembered adolescent daydreams. You go on a case-by-case basis. You get paid on both ends if you can. You scream at the walls. You pace around and worry a lot. You compose suicide notes and throw them in the garbage. You watch in sheer abject horror as your heart breaks in half and spasms still in your own hands. You rage out-of-control and see the weak glow of unconditional forgiveness in the eyes of those youve betrayed. You walk tall and fear no man. You shrivel away and cower in the dark, screaming for the mercy kill. You live fast and furious, slow and fucked-up, and half-dead on the street. The romance goes right out of it. But the poetry gets a little better. You find the muse somewhere down there under all that slime.

The fucking bastard.

I call him the Klown Prince Of Darkness.

He gets in there deep and he inconveniences me. He makes weird things happen in my gut. Then he tears out my guts and sets them on fire. He laughs while I run screaming like a pansy, drool and smoke and blood falling and rising and trickling from a horrifying grin filled with rotten teeth. He is everything I love and everything Ive ever been afraid to talk about, commercialized and painted black, put on sale in a freakshow for fifty cents, then stolen by a guy named Vinny who talks funny and walks with a limp. He is a spaceship and an assault rifle. He is a psycho killer and a hideous mutant freak. He is a drunken superhero on a joyride who leaps to his death from a freeway overpass. He is the last great drug I will ever experience. And then the walls close in and I cant breathe. I cant see. I cant fight. Its all pretty much over.

And then we go again.





Sunday, September 1.

Okay, kids, it's OFFICIAL:

The Showtime original anthology series MASTERS OF HORROR bows its ugly mug at ten o' clock in the PM on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28th. "Just in time for HALLOWEEN," as the trailer ads all say. It's 13 original one-hour films, each directed by a famous horror guy, such as JOHN CARPENTER, TOBE HOOPER, DARIO ARGENTO and DON COSCARELLI! That's just naming a few, kids. The premiere episode is called INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD, and it's the one I WROTE! Above is a picture of little old me, getting along well with a bunch of fake dead people created for the infamous "BASEMENT SEQUENCE!" (Moo-hoo-hah-hah!!!) Below is a nifty guided tour of images that track some of the production, with a few amusing stories about what we went through to make this damn thing! I worked and/or consulted with the director every step of the way, from casting, through principal photography in Canada, all the way to final editing. I was flattered and blown away that I got to have so much input into things, and Im sure Ill never have another experience like that again (. . . well, maybe on another Don Coscarelli movie!) Not to mention that our script was the only one in the entire MASTER OF HORROR series that stood on a SINGLE DRAFT. What that means is that from the time we submitted the thing to the people producing the series, to the start of photography, NOT ONE CHANGE was requested by any of the suits in charge! Do you have any idea how rare that is, people? Well, Ill simply say this: IT NEVER HAPPENS IN HOLLYWOOD!!!! Only guys like James fucking Cameron get away with shit like that! The changes we eventually were forced to make were a result of the chaotic and rushed shooting schedule and a great many Murphys Law things that kicked us in the nuts as we went along . . . but thats the name of the game in filmmaking. The shoot was a real tough one, but I learned a lot. And I wasnt the ONLY ONE who was blown away by my hands-on participation in things. All the producers were shocked and befuddled at how much Don trusted my creative instincts and everyone was constantly whispering behind our backs when we were re-writing the script on set as we went. Some of this led to a bit of political friction, which I wont go into here . . . but that's ALSO the name of the game in filmmaking, folks. I hope they invent a new game soon. It disgusts and amazes me that I can't imagine myself doing anything else for a living!

This is MOONFACE. He's a scary seven-foot-tall albino serial killer with silver capped teeth. He's played in our film by the coolest dude in the world, namely JOHN DE SANTIS, who was also LURCH in THE NEW ADVENTURES OF THE ADDAMS FAMILY. He was also the big lead demon in THIRTEEN GHOSTS. (Or was he a GHOST in that? I can never get these things right!) Anyway, John was really swell to work with and he's scary as hell in the movie!



THIS is our fearless director DON COSCARELLI. He's my pal. And he directed PHANTASM, THE BEASTMASTER and BUBBA HO-TEP . . . so he's way up in the cool book, too! Don and I wrote the screenplay together, and he was nice enough to let me make up almost all of the dialogue! Cooler still, the script is based on a GREAT short story by one of my favorite living authors, the amazing JOE R. LANSDALE! Do you know what that fucking MEANS, people? It means I got to work with TWO of my all-time favorite creative artists on my very first big-deal Hollywood movie----AWESOME!!!! We made INCIDENT in just TEN DAYS, and it wasn't easy. (Actually, it was eleven days, because we ended up with a lot to do at the end of the shoot, and we whined and begged the execs in charge to give us more time to get the movie right. It would still be unfinished to this moment had they not given us that extra day.) I LOVE this picture of Don. He looks like a real badass. Don't fuck with him.



Here's HOWARD BERGER in the makeup trailer, doing John up with his swell face for the film. Along with his partner in KNB Effects, Greg Nicotero, Howard is one of the most in-demand special makeup effects artists working today, having done every damn movie you can think of, including PULP FICTION, LAND OF THE DEAD, SIN CITY and the upcoming film version of THE LION THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE. Here he is assisted by the incredible MICHAEL FIELDS, an up-and-coming hotshot at the KNB effects company, who was really great to hang with on the set and watch at work. Every single morning, John Desantis had to sit through two hours of what you're seeing here, which is having a LOT of rubber glued to his mug . . . and then he had to go through another half hour getting his shoulders and arms airbrushed white to complete the albino effect. I almost never saw him out of makeup. He also wore red contacts, which were applied by a really hot lens technician from Germany, who's name I can't remember to save my life. (Her name doesn't show up in the credits either for some insane reason or another.) But shit, she was hot . . . and she had a nifty exotic accent, too. Never got a picture of her. DAMN!!!!



Here's another couple of hotties I got to work with on the film. On the left is Bree Turner, a fine actress and a swell human being. She made her movie debut in that first DEUCE BIGALOW flick as the "Aquarium Girl." (The character had a name in the film, but I can't remember what it was.) In our story, she's the fearless heroine who battles Moonface to the death, and she gave a GREAT performance! On the left is the LOVELY miss DANA HAMEL, who did everyone's "straight" makeup on the film, including some of John's. She's an award-winner, you know, and made Bree look really icky in these basement scenes. Since we were shooting all over the script on any given day, Dana really had to think on her feet and keep plenty of Polaroid continuity snapshots handy to determine whether or she would make Bree look like she'd been slapped around, run through the woods, banged on the head until bloody, or just plain cute. (The cute stuff only happens in the first five minutes, before all the mayhem starts---most of the time, everybody in this film looks like they've been brutally savaged in some bizarre gardening accident.) She was one of the people on the crew I was most impressed with, and she was nice to me. Plus she's a snappy dresser! So is Bree.



Another hot chick. Jesus, Stephen. No, really, shes beautiful AND TALENTED! This here is SARAH GRAHM, who was Howard Bergers other key makeup artist on the film. She was in charge of a couple of the deep stabbing effects that will really gross you out. Sarah never talked to me much, but she really enjoyed her job, and I was impressed by one particularly nasty bit of gore she came up with---so shes in the cool book, defacto, hands-down!



Okay, one more chick before we move on, okay? This is our amazing set decorator, looking all silly for the camera, getting the nasty basement set ready for shooting. You can see here some of the detail on the set, which was really expensive and very elaborately tricked-out with incredibly realistic and BLOODY corpses, most of which you will NOT see in the film because the rushed schedule (and other problems) did not allow for shooting many close-ups. Thats a shame, because some of this stuff is truly disturbing and would have been great to include on film! Our Set Dec babe was really cool to me, and she let me keep many props from the film, most of which I gave away when I got back to America to my friends. (I kept the nastiest, way-coolest trophy for myself, of course . . . but I cant tell you what it is. YET! Moo-hoo-hah-hah . . .)



Ahhhhh . . . . my old friend ANGUS SCRIMM. Don and I wrote a part into the film especially for this incredible guy, who is also the star of the PHANTASM pictures as The Tall Man. Angus (real name Rory Guy) just loved the character, and stayed religiously on-script during his performance, speaking nearly every word of the dialogue exactly as I wrote it for him! I kind of hoped he would run with it a little more, but he insisted that the character was perfect. He plays a crazy old guy who Moonface keeps around in his basement as a sort of mascot. Angus loved the finished film and he even called me a genius recently in print. Man, is that a TRIP or what? I GREW UP watching this guys movies!



This is the creepy cabin that was built in six sections just for us and placed on top of a mountain! No, really, they actually DID THAT! And they had these gigantic helium baloons that floated over the whole mountain, casting giant rays of artificial moonlight over the entire location. We had cranes, lightning rigs, and about a million crew guys busting theier assses to get these shots. This photo was taken during lunch, just before the sun went down and they started on this location. Since the actual shots in the scene take place in the dead of night, you can't even tell we're on a real mountain most of the time . . . but we were, dammit!



This is the first day of shooting. The cast and crew has already shot THREE major dramatic sequences with Bree Turner and her co-star ETHAN EMBRY (an amazing character actor who gives what I believe to be the performance of his entire career as a really haunting and scary survivalist) . . . and were all cold, tired and we want to go home. You see, on most films, you get a whole day---sometimes even a FEW DAYS---to film an emotionally-draining and logistically sticky scene like the THREE Bree and Ethan just did. We had TEN DAYS for our whole damm movie! So we managed to get those crucial sequences in the can before lunch (they came out great!), and now were in the woods behind the main location set, shooting a confrontation with Moonface! In the end, we will get FIVE key dialogue and action bits completely wrapped in ONE DAY of shooting. This was the only day, by the way, where things went almost exactly on schedule. Every other day was an uphill climb against rapidly-escalating odds. Thats me on the right, mugging it up in the freezing Vancouver summer. My buddy Justin on the left, who came up with me from Austin to watch the shoot.

For EVEN MORE about the making of MASTERS OF HORROR, and a few more swell photographs, check out my gallery, and the most recent BLOGS, which will be forthcoming as I have time to spew. ENJOY, fuckers . . . and watch my MOVIE in October!!!!